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Confidence in Christ

By July 8, 2016 No Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a confident person.

In today’s culture confidence is defined by a lot of things: confidence in your looks, your education, your nationality, your age, your clothes, your social status, your financial position, your talents, your job security, your perfect family.

I find it ironic that we spend a fortune (time, money and energy) pursuing every and any kind of opportunity and we label it “setting ourselves up for success.” Then we highlight these opportunities as featured perks on the resume of our lives as means of displaying our confidence and good standing.

I spent too many years of my life defined by my musical ability. In every social circle I ever found myself in, I was known as a music girl and I was okay with that (to an extent) because music really meant a lot to me. I loved it. I was passionate about it. I devoted myself to learning and growing and understanding everything I could about it because it made me come alive. It was my life until God asked me to surrender it and make HIM my life. He could see that, sadly, my confidence in music had actually replaced my confidence in Him.

See how that works?

We live in a culture that promotes opportunity: learn multiple languages, travel, play an instrument, pursue athletics, get straight A’s, dress professional (a.k.a trendy and hip), excel, excel, excel, and in the process of setting ourselves up for “success”, we actually set our lives up to not need God. I mean, think about it, why would we need God? He gives us brains after all… He gives us the ability to figure out things for ourselves after all…. We have been “blessed” to live in a land of opportunity after all…

All things we tell ourselves to help us feel better about our faith I assume.

So here I am at a crux in my life. I’m learning incredible epiphanies that are compelling me to depend less on myself and more on God while raising two little boys who will be growing up in a culture that is so self-serving and so self-gratifying that it flabbergasts me. I pray every day I raise Godly leaders, but it’s hard. In a culture that preaches: give your kids opportunity, I am forced everyday to get on my face and ask the burning question: will this opportunity “fill-in-the-blank” lead my boys to have greater confidence in Christ or greater confidence in themselves? If the later is true, I need to reconsider.

I ask the same question to each one of you today:

Who or what is your confidence in?

Is your confidence in yourself or in Christ?

If it’s in anything other than God, he just might be using today’s devotional to gently nudge you back to Him.

“Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.” -Psalm 20:7

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